Here is a short fictional film about militarized mini-drones. Someone the other day asked me questioned me about how technology is involved with weaponry. It is ever more becoming a reality. From futuristic armor to futuristic weapons, I think we are moving there. The question is how would you defend against such things as in the video?
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Having spent multiple years in hell aka East Texas as a sporting goods manager I can say there are certainly many who believe this, those many howeverā¦ Are not the greatest example of intelligent people and most believe qr codes are the mark of the beast. That said I can certainly see them being poorly weaponized by your average Joe as a one and done thing and certainly someone with large resources could go much further. If a company ever gets a delivery drone system up and running maybe this would be a legitimate concern
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I have no doubt someone could, if they wanted, turn a quadcopter into a weapon.
It would be a tremendous waste of effort though. Most quads can barely keep themselves in the air for 10 minutes or so. Add a payload and that decreases, unless you increase the size of the quad. Itās like rockets - a huge percentage of the vehicleās weight is propulsion and fuel. Adding fuel means adding weight means adding more thrust (bigger props) means increasing the size (and weight) of the vehicle, rinse and repeat.
It would be far easier on many fronts to build a payload-capable fixed-wing ādroneā (i.e., an r/c airplane). Thereās a reason the C-5 Galaxy, Airbus 380 and Boeing 747 are all fixed-wing aircraftā¦
Why use a mini drone when you could just harness the power of orbital satellite lasers!?
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Swarm loaded w/ bio agents.
Anything can be used as a weapon
How resourceful/creative are you?.
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Someone attached a handgun to a drone. You can get off one shot at a victim not expecting such an attack. Probably the same with a small IED.
I spent Wednesday night watching BattleBots with my brother. The rules now allow several independently piloted vehicles so long as the combined mass falls within the limit. Some teams attempted to use a drone. None were effective.
Drones are probably most effective as a terror weapon against those who do not know the limitations of the device.
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If Amazon plans on delivering boxes with drones to your home, why it it a stretch to put a bomb in box and deliver it somewhere?
It seems like some kevlar rope and a couple of drones could make a real difference. Do they allow tangling weapons, or is that banned? I havenāt watched in nearly two decades.
A bigger threat is to order up a driverless Uber and fill it with AMFO. They will have to come up with some way to counter that.
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Battle bots is infuriating. Tombstone could be quickly incapacitated with a metal net or a couple dozen feet of rope. Most bots would be shut down in seconds by an actual flame thrower. But the ārulesā donāt allow things that would really work if you were really trying to defeat that ābot.ā
I wish I had money to throw away, Iād set up a real robot fighting contest. One rule: max weight at start of fight: 100 kilos. Go at it, boys and girls.
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Then doesnāt it become a matter of how much money you have to spend?
Funny that, read a story about whatās arguably the first military-grade weaponized quadcopter just a few days ago.
But despite the general public and authors/game-makers/filmmakers getting excited about the concept, the delivery system isnāt the be-all-end-all. We certainly havenāt see a rash of terror attacks and assassinations using RC car/airplane-delivered bombs ala The Dead Pool introducing the idea to the general public 30 years ago in 1988. Nor have we seen RC aircraft evolve into lethal delivery systems despite being available for a similar time; the somewhat better capabilities and greater ease of flying quad/hex/octo-copters really hasnāt changed much.
No, the other side of the equation is the availability of explosives or other means of producing rapid surprise lethality that can be readily delivered by these systems and these still seem to be as difficult to procure as ever. Iām sure weāve all seen video of larger drones rigged with handguns (term emphasized because of the haphazard nature of attaching, aiming, and firing even a handgun to and with a reasonably-small drone) and perhaps lame CGI trickery such as FPS Russiaās āmachine gunā equipped quad (which miraculously seems to experience zero recoil and just so happened to coincide with an EA promo), but the practicality of such systems seems to be marginal at best.
So weāre down to what ā¦ using the kinetic energy these things can carry? Trying to slice people with the prop - itself operating at a safety factor just greater than 1 keeping the aircraft flying? Need a really big drone to hurt someone like that - big enough to attract a lot of attention that also makes itself a wee bit unwieldy.
Much like C4 or Composition B, those donāt seem to be available at the local 7-11 nor even the local pharmacy.
Indeed. Whether or not anything is effective or practical is another matter.
I do not believe tangling weapons are currently allowed. For instance, you cannot throw a net over your opponent.
The fundamental problem is that the bots can move very quickly and drone pilots do not appear to have the necessary control even if a drone can carry an effective weapon. The one in the show had a couple of small flamethrowers.
I canāt remember the bot that got DQād a couple of years ago. It had a ādecorationā of a wrapped Christmas present in its claw or somesuch. The package contained a net, if I recall correctly, which shut down the spinning weapon of its opponent.
Point being - effective countermeasures donāt have to be expensive.
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The War on Drugs has created an enormously effective smuggling industry. I would not feel so safe.
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Hereās a fun thought - once fly-by-wire trickles down to general aviation, wiring up a Pixhawk to control a light aircraft loaded with ANFO becomes a real security problemā¦
Yeah, fouling weapons are banned. That is the only real scenario I can see for effective use of drones. You canāt muster enough mass to do much, or store enough fuel to continuously rain fire on the opponent (since it will involve a fair amount of missing).
There is immense demand for illicit drugs. Much less so explosives, poisons, bio-weapons, and other dime novel plots.
Yeah, but if someone was intent on importing that, the reliable pipeline exists.